I’m emerging from my blogging hermitage for just a few moments because the two trending topics in Facebook right now are, oddly enough, Christmas and Tim Tebow. Now the first thing you need to know about my relationship with Tim Tebow is that I am an Ohio State fan and watched with anguish and heartache when The Ohio State University began a troubled relationship with the SEC, which includes Florida. Tebow seemed like an exception at the time with his philanthropy and just general good-guyness and I gave him the same pass that I now extend to Urban Meyer. Come on, it’s college football, part of the fun is that secondary and tertiary allegiances change every single week.
But now Tebow’s righteousness and/or self-righteousness is at the forefront and everyone has an opinion. I’m not going to take that bait however. What I want to take up is an article I read yesterday that came to the conclusion that Tebow is a good guy but it remains to be seen whether or not he’ll prove to be the hypocrite that so many Christians and professional athletes turn out to be. I’m going to ruin the suspense: Tebow is a hypocrite and the real question is whether or not he’ll be a hypocrite in some big, public way or a smaller, more personal way.
How do I know this? What is my proof? Well, it comes down to this oft-cited and oft-forgotten critique of all humanity: “Nobody’s perfect.” We pretty much universally acknowledge that one, right? Nobody’s perfect. We know that. But somehow we’re all pretty surprised when someone turns out not to be perfect. That’s where coaches Jim Tressel and Joe Paterno come in. Both men are heavyweights in college football. Both men have a legacy of victories but also integrity. Both men then made bad decisions that landed them in trouble and we all acted surprised and offended when it all went down.
Tressel, prior to May, was a sweater-vested saint: “The Senator.” “In Tressel we trust.” This is partly an image he cultivated, but it’s also just part of who he is. At no time did Tressel ever claim he was perfect and I’m reasonably sure he would never claim to be. Same with Paterno. But both men, being humans, are not perfect. Prior to their separate scandals they weren’t perfect either. They had screwed something up, just not as publicly. But still we somehow felt betrayed and angry. It really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it.
One of the charges leveled at Tressel and Paterno is that they are hypocrites, that they talked about integrity and doing the right thing, but when it came down to it, they didn’t do it themselves. And I agree, that makes them hypocrites. They are men who held themselves to a higher standard and they fell short of that standard. But, if we understand that nobody’s perfect, that makes everyone who holds themselves to a higher standard a hypocrite eventually. The solution then becomes to either hold yourself to an incredibly low standard or just acknowledge that everyone is going to be imperfect and a hypocrite and move on. I think the choice here is pretty clear: people who hold themselves to low standards do not make responsible or good leaders. Our leaders need to be people of high standards, standards that none of us can actually stand up to, because that is the only way we learn and grow.
But it goes deeper than nobody’s perfect. Much deeper, and that’s where Yoda comes in. In The Empire Strikes Back Yoda is talking about the dark side of the Force and Luke asks the astute question, “Is the dark side stronger?” Yoda sagely replies: “No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.” Don’t miss this: Yoda is saying that the dark side is our default setting. The dark side is as easy as falling into bed; it’s the light side we have to work at. We take this at face value because the Force is something that George Lucas made up, but I don’t think George is talking about the Force here. He’s talking about human nature. The Force isn’t the issue here, it’s what our nature feels comfortable pursuing, basically our own wills and our own desires, rather than the higher and more difficult calling of a greater good.
To bring this back to the real world a bit, we find a similar notion in Christian theology with a wholly depressing name: “total depravity.” It basically means that humans aren’t perfect and we’re all hypocrites. In more detail: humans are completely separate from good, which comes from God, and any good in a person comes from God, not the person. It’s not a happy thought, but it does describe what we see going on around us with Paterno and Tressel and all the rest of us hypocrites. We can know everything there is about morality and what the right call is in each situation, but we are still fully capable of screwing it up. Anyone following the situation, including Joe and Jim, have probably wondered how they could be so stupid. But it’s not an issue of intelligence or even of the brain, it’s a heart issue and our hearts, to be blunt, are flawed.
This is why I don’t doubt that Tebow is a hypocrite. I know for a fact he’s screwed up and I know for a fact he will screw up again, and I don’t think he’d mind me saying that. My hope and prayer is that it won’t be anything too devastating or public, but that’s not guaranteed. And the same goes for me. My hypocrisy is boundless and I am going to mess it all up bad one day, so consider this my confession in advance. I hope it’s nothing too public and too awful, but I know what I am capable of and I hope it doesn’t come to that.
But just as I believe in total depravity because it describes the human condition, I believe in something else that prescribes the cure. If I am the problem, I can’t be the cure, the cure has to come from outside of me. So it can’t be more knowledge and it can’t be modified behavior. I need a heart transplant, and that is exactly the promise that Christ makes each of us. If we accept the gift of grace, Christ does the work and fixes our sin account for us. That is the lifeline that I’m sure Tebow and Tressel and Paterno and I are clinging to. There are many voices that will say we are beyond forgiveness, but there is one Voice saying we’re not, and that’s the only one we need to listen to.
